


Overheard

by Wushu76



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wushu76/pseuds/Wushu76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He hadn’t even known the two knew each other, Pike had said he’d studied his Dad, not known him."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overheard

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt in the Live Journal st_xi_kink* meme.
> 
> Written in 2009.

“You couldn’t have George, so what; you decided to go after his son? Did you go after him to spite me? He could have DIED!”

Jim almost skidded to a halt as he heard that voice. He knew that voice, but the tone, biting and vicious was new.

“I’d ask how the hell you got into my room but I don’t think it’s really that important is it?” There was such weariness to Pike’s voice; Jim had never heard Pike sound that way before. “You don’t want to do this with me Winona, truly you don’t. I don’t have the respect for you that I used to; you will not like what I have to say.”

“Respect? For me?” His mother’s voice was bitter and mocking all at once. “You never had the slightest respect for me or my position in George’s life. Ever. You showed that when you pursued a married man.” 

There was a long silence and for a moment Jim wondered if Pike was going to reply at all, but then the man started speaking.

“Alright Winona, if we’re going to do this, lets do it. This conversation has been years in the making.” Jim heard his mother make a scoffing noise and there was the sound of rustling, as if cloth was shifting around and he resisted the urge to move closer. To try and see into Pike’s room. Jim wanted hear this and being seen would end the conversation or at least his chance of being there for it. He hadn’t even known the two knew each other, Pike had said he’d studied his Dad, not known him.

“I didn’t, as you say, pursue a married man Winona. George pursued me. And don’t even start to get indignant about it, until you started re-writing history, you and George had an open relationship.” Jim frowned, that was something he couldn’t believe, not after listening to his mother’s drunken ramblings on his birthday every year.

“You were just a… distraction! Nothing more than a body in his bed.” Winona said suddenly, but even Jim could hear his mother didn’t believe that.

“I loved George.” It was said flat, with no emotion and Jim’s head reared back. “Which isn’t a strange thing; he was a very easy man to love. He was a good man who had enough room in his heart to love many people in return. Don’t even try and demean what I shared with him, because after this long, you don’t have that kind of power over me. George was a wise and loving soul who would be disgusted with the person you have become.”

Jim could hear his mother’s gasp easily, and suddenly he wondered if he really did want to hear this conversation. However, he’d come this far, and the one thing James T. Kirk had never learnt to do was back away. From anything.

“You took his loss and let it twist you into a woman I don’t even recognise any more Winona.” Now there was emotion in Pike’s voice, but Jim couldn’t work out what it was. “A woman George wouldn’t recognise. When he died, you refused me any contact with his children and I didn’t fight you. You were their mother, and I wasn’t legally anything to them. And until the day I met James, I was sure and confident of that decision because I knew the woman George Kirk had loved, wooed and married would be an attentive and loving mother.”

Jim shook his head, from Pike’s voice it was clear that he wasn’t being sarcastic in his last comments, but attentive and loving was not how he could have described his mother. Ever. 

“I recognised him Winona, a half dozen words into meting him, drunk and bleeding over a table after breaking up a bar fight he was having with four of my cadets. That cockiness was too familiar to me. And I looked him up. Abused my Starfleet security clearance and everything, because I needed to understand what I was seeing.” Pike stoped speaking and was silent for a long moment. There were sounds of movement, maybe, but Jim couldn’t tell what was going on.

“You married that asshole George rescued you from… and then you left your children with him. He was a nasty drunk with you before you left him for George, I don’t doubt for a moment he was even worse when you came back with George’s children.” The anger in Pike’s voice was clear. ‘I checked your record too Commander.” The stress on his mother’s rank was very pointed.

“From when James was six years old, until the day he joined up, you have spent less than 12 months on Earth. I know you haven’t sent him one lousy com message for the whole time he was in the Academy. As his advisor, I would have known if he’d received any out of system messages. Did you even know he’s joined up? Or did you find out when the publicity started?”

Her lack of reply was damning and a part of Jim wondered why it even hurt any more, his mother had never been in his life enough for him to say she had checked out if it. “You left George’s loss blind you to being anything but a bitter woman who couldn’t even be a good mother. And for that, I don’t believe George would, could ever forgive you. I know I can’t.”

“So you decided to punish me? By what… stealing his son into Starfleet? As what? A… replacement for George? Did you seduce him as well? Or did you let him seduce you? God knows he’ll sleep with anything that stays still long enough.” There was a nasty, suggestive tone to Winona’s voice, and Jim took a step backwards in response, even though neither of them knew he was there.

“Don’t be disgusting Winona.” Pike grated out, “James is my lover’s child. He’s George’s child. I would love him for that alone, but he’s proved himself much more than that over the last three years. His academic record, except for one incident, is flawless and considering he just saved earth, and the complaint has been dropped, it will remain that way. He will be graduating at the top of his class and will be the first cadet in Starfleet history to be offered promotion to captain and command of the flagship of the fleet BEFORE graduating the academy. I couldn’t be prouder of him if he was MY flesh and blood. I may have cared about him because of George at first, but now? I know exactly who and what James Kirk is and I have to say, all things considered, I am very glad he takes after his father, and not you.” 

“I tried! I… I couldn’t look at him without seeing George.” Jim knew that, he couldn’t remember a day when he didn’t know his mother hated looking at him, that all she saw was her dead husband in his face.

“There is no redemption for you here, no one to say you did your best, that you were grieving your husband, and that makes your mistakes okay. It doesn’t. You hid in your grief and lost your children for it.” There wasn’t any nastiness in Pikes voice, something Jim knew he wouldn’t have been able to resist if he was saying the same things to anyone, but there was a deliberateness to it, Pike wasn’t being nasty but he clearly wanted her to hear what he had to say. To feel it. “Sam couldn’t get off the planet fast enough, and Jim? Was on his way to being a career brawler and petty criminal. He’s worth so much more than that. I hope George will forgive me for letting go of them. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive you for what you did.”

When she spoke again, there was a brittleness to her voice that Jim hadn’t heard before.

“You don’t have the right to judge me Christopher Pike. I’m George’s wife and you are just a washed up Captain that might never walk again.” That was deliberately said to hurt, all the nastiness that had been missing from Pikes voice was there in his mothers, in spades.

“Don’t try Winona. For you to hurt me, I would have to care or respect your opinion, and I don’t any longer.” Jim wished suddenly that he could see his mother’s expression, he’d never heard someone talk to her this way, even he hadn’t, although there had been times he’d tried. “And you know what else? Unless you’re here to offer him your apologies and support? Stay the hell away from Jim. He’s standing on his own two feet now, a man that George would be incredibly proud to call his son, and I won’t have your bitterness hurting him any longer.”

“You can’t keep me from James. He’s my child!” There was such an affronted tone in his mother’s voice that Jim had to suppress a laugh he knew would have come out sounding bitter.

“He’s not yours Winona. He never really was, but now? He’s Starfleet’s. He’s mine. And I protect my own.” Jim couldn’t control the warmth he felt at Pike’s statement, somewhere deep within that normally only Bones’ steadfast friendship managed to find and he smiled, just a little. “Don’t test me on this Commander.”

The sound of rapid footsteps alerted him to his mother’s sudden retreat from Pike’s room, and in an unusual decision to avoid a confrontation Jim ducked into the room next to Pike’s, hearing his mother’s rapid steps down the hall. Coming out of the room he watched her escape until she was out of his sight and then turned to walk into Pike’s room. He didn’t pretend he hadn’t overheard, but moved to close the door and asked something he had never dared ask his mother, because she never could have answered, “Tell me about my father?”


End file.
